Most people don’t consider the idea of creating value in their communication. So if you’re doing this, obviously, you’re not telling your customer “well, I’m here to create value in our communication,” right? You’re just doing it. You’re adding value in the conversation. You’re thinking about, “what can I say when I reach out to this person the next time to make this communication more interesting, more beneficial?” By doing that, you’re going to create that in their brains and they’re not even going to know why it’s happening.

David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today’s episode, co-host Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing creating high value communications. Welcome back, Jay.

Jay: Hey, David, once again, great to be here with you as we talk again about a topic that I know in my business career, we probably haven’t had this conversation a lot.

Communication is just something that happens. And it may depend on whether you’re old school or new school. Old school, we’re just making phone calls and picking up the phone. And that’s high value communication. And if it’s new school, we’re texting and emailing. And that’s the extent of the thought process.

David: Yeah, and I think the adjective here, the high value part of it may be what we’re bringing to the discussion today. Because you’re right, communication in business is expected. It comes with the job.

Mm-hmm.

And we’re always going to be communicating. But the fact of the matter is that particularly now, as people are more and more likely to skip over communication, if they don’t like what you’re saying or if they don’t feel like it’s worthwhile to them, it becomes more important for us to ask ourselves “am I creating value in this conversation?”

Am I creating value in this email, this text, this phone call, this podcast, right? Because if we’re not communicating value in the discussion, then we’re doing our listeners a disservice. We’re doing whoever it is that we’re calling a disservice. Whoever we’re emailing, we’re doing them all a big disservice.

So, If we consider the idea that we need to be engaged in high value communication as much as possible, it will very likely change what we’re saying at any given time.

Jay: Yeah, such a great point. I think that most people now are engaging these new technologies that make the communication part automatic, right?

Like drip campaigns, newsletters, automatic texting or whatever. So that part of the equation is fairly easy to implement. But then the real question, as you’re bringing up, is if I’m not providing value in that communication, I am training the customer or the potential customer to block me out.

Because that’s the other thing that’s so easy. It’s so easy to automatically communicate. But on the other end, it is so easy for me when I hit delete in my messages. It says, do you want to block this sender? And that’s it. It’s done. It’s over. So that’s why you want to focus on that word value.

David: Yeah, and particularly now when people are using AI to help generate communications. And my belief is that’s going to cause a lot of communications to start looking like other communications.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody’s going to be saying pretty much the same things. But if you are operating with the intent of creating value in the communication that’s going to be a component that you might be adding that other people aren’t going to be adding into their algorithm, whether it’s with AI or whether it’s what they’re doing themselves.

And you also raised a great point, which is the idea of if you’re not doing this, you are training people essentially to ignore you. And wow, that’s not what we want to train people to do.

Jay: Right. my email service now, I use Mac right at the top now, they put the unsubscribe button, like that’s the first thing I see.

So it is so easy, and I just think about it. There are newsletters that I keep, that I allow to keep coming, and there are those that I unsubscribe to immediately. And I kind of do this thing where I, okay, I’ll scan down quick. And I’m looking for value for me. Because I have a time to value, you know, ratio.

So I’m looking, is this something, is there anything in here that this person’s sending me that I really care about? And if I get one or two and the answer is no, they’re done. That’s it. You’ll never get through to me again.

David: Right. And when you think about it, particularly with something like email, but it also applies to texts or whatever, When you’re looking through your inbox, you’re going to see two things. You’re going to see who it’s from, and you’re going to see the subject line.

Mm-hmm.

What is it that they’re trying to communicate? So sometimes people will look at your name and they’ll say, “oh, it’s from Jay. I’m going to open this.” They don’t even care what the subject line is.

Yeah.

But if you don’t have that sort of relationship, they’re going to say, “okay, it’s from Jay. What does he want?” Right? And then they might go to the subject line and say, “does this subject line interest me enough to open this?”

And if the answer is yes, then it will get opened. But that combination is going to be huge. And if you’re not thinking in terms of adding value in your communication, then you’re very likely not going to have any value mentioned in your subject line, and you’re going to dramatically reduce the likelihood that it’s going to get opened.

Jay: Yeah, I agree. So we’re kind of talking about the drip campaigns or the ongoing attempts to kind of get in and remind them about us. That’s one part of communication. But I also think it’s important to assess the value of the regular ongoing communication that is happening.

Like when somebody calls in, are they getting a phone tree? When somebody on your staff or you talk to somebody, is somebody going to hang up the phone and say, and we’ve all had this happen. I hang up the phone and I go, well, that was a big fat waste of time, right?

And so clearly I didn’t have a high value conversation with the person who I was talking to.

David: Yeah, exactly, and I think we’ve all been in that situation where we’ve either been on the receiving end of it or we’ve been on the ascending side of it, where we just feel like, “oh wow, I clearly didn’t create enough value in this communication.”

If they’re ignoring us, if they’re ghosting us, there’s always a reason for it. Now that reason is not always us. maybe it’s not your communication. Maybe you’re doing everything right and this person just has different things going on, or they’re afraid to say no, whatever that is.

We’re never going to completely get around that. But if you recognize the fact that most people are going to be looking for “what’s in it for me? What’s the benefit to me in pursuing this conversation?” Then we can change what we’re doing.

And the really great point that you raised there is, yeah, we’re not just talking about drip campaigns, we are talking about every single bit of communication that you put out. And that’s sort of what we led off with, is that you need to create high value communication in everything.

Telephone calls, voice messages when you’re leaving a voicemail message. A lot of people don’t get calls back when they leave a voicemail message. And some of the reason for that is very likely the fact that there may not be enough value created in the message that is being left.

If the message is, “Hey, give me a call back,” and I don’t know why I should, because I don’t know how that will benefit me, then the likelihood of me calling back is dramatically reduced.

But if I recognize that I need to dangle some sort of carrot there. Why should they want to contact me back? Why should they want to return the call? And if I can add some value in there, give me a call back so I can, dot dot dot.

What is it? What can you do that would be beneficial to them? Because if you say that in the communication, they’ll be a lot more likely to reply.

Jay: Yeah. I think today it’s so funny how we respond to things. When I get an email that I don’t feel like had value or that I didn’t ask for. I feel invaded. I feel like somebody has come into my house and forced their will upon me. And when I get a text, it’s even worse.

We judge these communications so aggressively and one of the other things that jumps into my mind that is so important about high value communication, one of the things I hate is when I call and whoever I’m calling goes right into the sales pitch, like right away.

We don’t want to misinterpret value as the minute I get on the phone with them, I’m going to tell you what my value is to them. My preference is that they spend some time getting to know me so that they can properly explain to me how their product or service fits into my situation.

If they’re just going to start cramming stuff down my throat, the minute we start talking, I’m going to be gone pretty quick.

David: Yeah, and that’s an excellent distinction. Because there’s the value that we will create if and when we do business together, right? If I’m trying to sell you something, there should be value created if we’re doing business together, right? Otherwise, there’s no purpose in that happening.

But I’m talking about the value that has to happen to even have that conversation. When you dive right into “here’s who I am and here’s what I sell,” they don’t understand the value at that point, right?

Because the value has to come, to some extent, from the relationship that we are establ